Actually, this image was taken the same day as the porcelain berries (Ampelopsis brevipedunculata) featured in a previous Monday color, just in a location several hundred meters away. I felt the need to spread them out in posting times, and this was as far as I could go. Unless I continue the Monday color through the winter months. Check back next year/week and see.
Christmas day in the morning
The title phrase is a curse, or I suppose an exclamation, that my dad used to say. Still does, perhaps – I haven’t heard it in a long time, but then I don’t get the chance to hang around him much.
Regardless of his language habits, these shots are actually from this morning, before the sun was visible over the horizon. I saw colors developing in the sky and trotted over to the pond, to be surprised with a sunrise rainbow. Because of the sun angle, I don’t think you can get a conventional rainbow any higher in the sky than this, though other atmospheric effects can occur.
This one is unaltered, and I thought I had the white balance set for sunlight – certainly looks that way from the red in the sky – but it seems I had auto white balance set instead. That’s what comes from shooting in a hurry before the rainbow faded, because I know that I should have been shooting in sunlight balance to keep the colors; doesn’t look like it had a bad effect anyway. I also did a few frames with the intention of joining them in a panoramic, producing a much wider angle of view than my lenses are capable of, but I still had the wide-angle lens mounted and the fisheye distortion is going to keep the frames from matching up without a lot of Photoshop work, so you’ll have to wait until later to see if I’m successful.
The secondary arc was only visible in places, and it was just for a brief period that the main arc was complete across the sky. By the time the sun was “up,” insofar as local sunrise is calculated, the bow had vanished – it was fading even as the first direct light touched the tops of the trees. I’d tried calling The Girlfriend to stop working on The Fabulous Christmas Quiche (yes that’s a proper noun) to come out and see it, but she never heard the phone ring – to the best of my knowledge, I’m the only one in the immediate area that actually saw the display. The early morning dog-walkers and joggers were all too late.
A quick attempt to be fartsy – it’s not exactly the time of year to have foreground elements to work with, you know. Though, granted, I was doing this in a T-shirt, shorts, and sandals – this is no surprise to anyone on the east coast presently, but it’s a reminder for anyone seeing this post at any later date – the weather has been ridiculously warm right now, courtesy of a warm front pushing lots of rain (as in, flood warnings) for the past few days.
Speaking of that, you might have thought that the rainbow indicated either a past or, more likely (it’s opposite the sun at sunrise, thus westerly) oncoming rain storm. However, nothing of the sort happened, nor did it look like it was about to; I think the rainbow was courtesy of nothing more than morning mist.
This one has gone through a slight color tweak to bring out more balanced colors, but the flare is from the original, an not an aspect of being too enthusiastic with the saturation settings – it shows up in some of the frames showing the other side, too, so I think it’s an artifact of the conditions.
With the fleeting phenomenon of the rainbow, I wasn’t paying any attention to the other colors in the sky, and by the time the bow was gone the clouds had largely become neutral as well. That’s okay – I think the rainbow was making for better photos anyway. Granted, I’ve seen better displays, but hey, it was a nice bonus for the morning.
No time, no time
As mentioned earlier, I’ve been involved in several different pursuits at this point and have had little time to devote to the blogarino, and even this one is going to be quick. But you know, that special day has rolled around again, the explanation for why I have been so pressed for time, and the celebration that it’s only getting better from here on in (for six months, anyway): yes, it’s the winter solstice, the shortest day of the year! From the bigoted standpoint of northern hemispherans, anyway – Australians and Patagonians are not going to relate, and may be doing exactly what I was doing six months ago (and refused to make note of then,) which is trying to forget that the days are now going to be getting shorter.
Like before, I’ve attempted to feature a photo taken on either a previous winter solstice or a summer solstice, but like before, I have very few photos actually taken then – it seems I never get out on those days. And looking at the conditions of the sky right now, I’m not taking anything today to use for a later, post, either. So we go back to last year and just a few days before, on December 19th, one of the photos taken during an outing to a botanical garden but not used when I posted about it ten days later (sheesh.) I have no idea what these flowers are, but they were indeed in bloom in December. And in fact, I might have had some recent ones to post here, but somebody had to cancel out on a trip there scheduled for this past Saturday. Not looking in any particular directions, here…
But while I’m logged in and have been poking through the image folders, let’s go with another, this one from January of this year, one month past the solstice during a trip to the Museum of Life and Science. This particular shot has a hidden meaning to it, because it is the exact same spot and plant featured three years ago, one that I happened to like. I just wasted too much time trying to identify the butterfly, so I’m letting it go – the day’s too short for that kind of thing. I’ll let someone in Botswana figure it out – they’ve got the time.
Monday color 46
In honor of the holidays, I present this holiday composition. Except, it isn’t, really, even though I am reminded irresistibly of christmas whenever I see it, for reasons unknown. Taken in the late fall when an unidentified tree was sporting some lone bright reds, it contrasted nicely with the cedar, or whatever – you know, I don’t know my trees, so don’t look to me for botanical information. Just enjoy the image.
On the negative side 7
It’s been a busy week, and I haven’t had much time to even look at some of the drafts I have in the folder, much less tackle anything new to write, and I’m not sure this will improve before christmas. So for now, we’ll step onto the Wayback Crack and break causality’s back. And here, you didn’t think I could turn a metaphor…
In a previous episode, I featured my first wild gator pic, taken at J.N. “Ding” Darling Wildlife Refuge on Sanibel Island, so on the first trip on my own to Florida a couple of years later, I had to return. That day, unfortunately, was incredibly slow – the weather was a little off, and there simply wasn’t much of anything to see, which is how it goes sometimes. You can’t judge a locale based on one visit, because you might simply have gotten there at a dead time (or a remarkably active one.)
Alongside a large pool that turned out to be a shallow flood plain, I spotted a couple of wading birds in the distance, a great blue heron (Ardea herodias) and a great egret (Ardea alba) – or at least, it was probably a great egret. It might also have been a great white heron, which is a white phase of the great blue that is found only in Florida and down into the Caribbean. The way to distinguish them is the color of the legs: egrets have black legs, while the herons have tan legs. The photo wasn’t distinct enough to display this effectively.
The driftwood and the reflections were a nice touch, though the hazy sky took away a lot of the color vibrancy and any kind of interesting background. The way the undergrowth alongside the pool and access road were, this was the only vantage I could get, and I wasn’t wild about the background. But there’s a simple trick that I encourage people to remember, which is how three-dimensional the world is. By changing our own shooting position, we can change the position of the subject and the background in the frame, and sometimes get a composition that works better. In this case, I realized I needed to be higher.
Florida is flat, and Sanibel doubly so – there was no hill to climb, and not even any trees that might serve as a perch. So I clambered onto the roof of my little Corolla, standing carefully along the roof edge where the framing could support my weight and I could avoid the sunroof. This was akin to balancing on a beam, nothing difficult, but slightly more challenging when then looking through a telephoto lens and trying to compose the shot. It worked, however.
Now, this is a demonstration of the change that comes from position, but it’s not a great shot. A small portion of the blame can be placed on negative film, which is grainier and less vibrant than most slide films – the reason why, a dozen or so years ago, editors would only buy slides for publication, a switch I made a few years after this trip (but before the next.) More blame falls on me, however. The light simply wasn’t supportive of such a composition, and my framing is a little too centered. See that driftwood off to the right in the previous image? I (probably) could have shifted my aim to the right, putting more driftwood into the frame and setting the birds off-center to the left, to make a little more dynamic shot. I say I probably could have shifted more to the right, but it’s possible that there were more distractions and unattractive gunk over there; I can’t remember everything about trips from 20-odd years ago. I did, at least, get the foreground foliage out of the shot, which was what created the extremely faint blotches in the lower part of the frame.
So while we’re talking about composing, let’s look at the details. The great blue heron came up more distinct when framed against the bright reflecting water, but the egret still isn’t standing out well. Ideally, one would work the background to be dark behind a light subject, and light behind a dark one, just to boost that contrast and attract the eye better. Had the sky been blue with fluffy clouds, I might have tried to put the egret against blue sky and the heron against a white cloud. Note, also, that the hue of the water may change with angle, faintly visible here as it becomes darker towards the bottom of the frame. And of course, shooting at dawn just as the sun peeked over the foliage and illuminated the birds in an orange glow would have been nice. Birds don’t spend their nights down in reach of predators, though, so such a thing might not have been possible at sunrise anyway…
Though this shot spent a few years up on my wall (on the ‘beach’ wall; I also had a ‘forest’ wall,) I’ve moved on and don’t think it’s a worthwhile effort anymore. This happens: shots you might have been really proud of at one time may later become viewed with disdain, and this is a good thing. It means you’re improving.
Monday color 45
As can be seen from recent posts, I’ve actually captured images with more color, but I chose this one because, as of publishing, it’s slightly over 11 hours old. The wild blue phlox (Phlox divaricata divaricata) that surrounds the Japanese maple right out front seems confused over the season, since it hasn’t produced any flowers since May, but this lone stem is trying to be different. The Girlfriend had pointed out yesterday that there were cherry trees in bloom, anachronistically, and so I had to show this to her where I discovered it. It’s not particularly warm for this time of year, either, so don’t ask me what’s causing this.
The grey hours
Nature photographers are all familiar with the ‘golden hours,’ times right around dawn and dusk when the light conditions are often highly conducive to great photos. That is, when it’s not rainy or overcast of course, but fog – that’s another thing. It’s hardly golden, but it can be a great element in photos. Yesterday morning as I was getting ready to meet with a student, I dashed over to the nearby pond for a quick session. This, by the way, is almost the exact same view to be seen in these lightning photos.
The worst part about a sunrise fog is how low the light levels are, dragging shutter speeds down – it’s enough to make droplet and macro images extremely tricky to get unless you lug along a tripod (which I did not – the schedule was too tight to get serious about it.) So a lot of what I shot simply didn’t come out, despite taking lots of frames to increase my chances. But there were enough that did, and one of the more interesting aspects of these conditions is that it shows exactly how active spiders are, because every strand of web gathers dewdrops – not just the orb webs as seen here, but every dragline, every safety strand and travel line across branches, things that would have otherwise remained invisible. In most cases, no spider can be found; even if the web is in use, the spiders usually abandon their hunting positions to take shelter from the humidity up in their ‘safe’ location, usually one of the upper anchors of the web. They seem to know that no insects are going to be captured in such conditions, plus who knows? Maybe the web gets slippery…
One thing that they don’t seem to be bothered by, however, is dew on their own bodies; I’ve seen some spiders simply dripping with dew, attracted to them the same way it is attracted to other surfaces. And not every spider abandons their post.
This orb weaver was alongside a deep ditch that prevented viewing from the opposite side, which would have been a better angle, but at least I managed to get it and its old prey in the same plane for the handheld shot at f4. Trickier still was placing the dark spider against a light spot in the background while simultaneously getting the fly against a dark spot for maximum contrast; believe it or not, I actually rotated the camera slightly thinking it would rotate either the web or the background for a better fit against the other. Hey, it was early…
There were other little vignettes to be found, though there was no way I was going to pull off a lighting effect like this one, which I consider much nicer. Still, this works – gotta move on, can’t dwell on the past.
And one more, perhaps the best of the landscape shots.
I have to point out that tree trunk on the far side, visible just above the foliage coming in from the right; it’s the same tree as the ghost shot in the previous post, though from a different angle. But of course you recognized it…
Greasing up the ol’ camera
Okay, don’t do that. All I was referring to was actually getting out to do a bit of shooting (like, over 400 frames) when I’ve been doing almost nothing for the past few weeks. Both students that I had to cancel out on last weekend when I felt like crud had been rescheduled for this weekend, when we had some surprisingly cooperative weather, so I was able to chase some more things of interest.
Curiously, the conditions were radically different within a small geographic area. Mason Farm Biological Reserve was largely as expected for this time of year: loaded with grey and brown dried foliage, with the only activity coming from the birds (well, and the birders and joggers.) As seen above, some splashes of color could be found if one was selective, but most of it looked like the image at left, far too close to monochrome. This, by the way, is a tight crop from the original frame, since I hadn’t bothered with the weight of the long lens (again, I was with a student) and so wasn’t loaded for birds, but this female American goldfinch (Spinus tristis) was kind enough to forage through a clump of leaves only a handful of meters away and was captured with the Mamiya 80mm macro. It was alone among the many birds seen yesterday, since it not only remained relatively close, but even chose good light conditions – far too many of them either remained on the shady sides of the trees or only popped out momentarily while at too great a distance. Had we picked a spot and exercised a lot of patience, however, we might have had a bit more luck.
Below, some tenacious leaves on a vine capture the morning sun from behind and stand out from the landscape rather distinctly. I’m embarrassed by this now, because I’m sure they were just trying to attract attention, and I don’t like encouraging such wanton behavior.
Having exhausted what Mason Farm had to offer, we hiked the short separation over to the North Carolina Botanical Garden, which presented a lot more of interest even as we first hit the entrance. Several species of flowers were still in bloom, and the warmth of the day had brought the pollinators back out, some still appearing to be groggy from the overnight chill.
The clusters of late-blooming flowers were a drastic difference from the nearby reserve, and the bees were making the most of it before another drop in temperature sent them back to the protection of their hives and nests. This one is most likely a male Eastern carpenter bee (Xylocopa virginica,) betrayed by the white spot on its face. I’m among the many who consider everything that looks like this a “bumblebee,” but technically it’s not. Supposedly, it also lacks a stinger, and maybe some day I’ll test out this hypothesis by snagging one as it raids a blossom – anything for science.
The activity seemed to be evenly split between the carpenter bees and the European honeybees (Apis mellifera,) with a single hoverfly making an appearance but not holding still long enough for me to lock focus – actually, it seemed to be chasing me off as I loomed in, very distinctly concentrating on the lens rather than the flower every time I was close enough for a shot. But the honeybees were more cooperative.
I just spent far too long trying to determine what these flowers were, with no luck at all – in my defense, they were in a patch with no ID markers. You’d think it wouldn’t be that hard to find something that blooms in December, but maybe my Google-Fu is rusty…
Another surprise was a green anole, here displaying a brownish hue, that was dodging us on a trellis before we finally caught it during a pause. I always like the anoles; there’s something about their mosaic skin. Note the short depth that shows the full face, but then nothing else in sharp focus but the foot. Capturing these images in the garden made me feel I had accomplished something for the day.
You may recall that I pointed out an astronomical event a short time back, the occultation of Venus. As it always goes, the skies went completely sour around here after I mentioned it on the blog, or perhaps almost completely – after writing it off and getting involved in other things, the skies cleared abruptly and might even have permitted a view of the emergence from behind the moon. Anyway, in superstitious recognition of repeated posts about upcoming events that produced nothing of any kind to follow-up with, I kept mum about the Geminids meteor shower, which peak tonight and tomorrow night but had already shown significant activity on earlier evenings, at least according to some observers. So last night I went out, with nice clear skies, and tried my luck.
I was getting halfway decent views and exposures, but not a meteor to be seen. And yes, I know this isn’t Gemini, which sits above and to the left of Orion, but Orion was more interesting. Doesn’t matter – not one exposure showed a damn thing, nor did I see anything outside of the camera’s field of view. So as the clouds started obscuring the stars, I switched subjects and did a quick experiment, which due to the conflicting light colors, looks much better in monochrome.
Yes, that’s me; twenty-second exposure, where I took my place for about fifteen of it, light produced by a streetlamp behind the tree. I’ve tried this before, but this one finally came out about how I’d intended, so I have at least that to show for the night’s session.
If you have to ask…
I know, I know, this is hardly ‘timely,’ insofar as what provoked the post anyway, but the content still applies, and I prefer to take the time to do the subject justice rather than dash off something so it’s “fresh.”
In the wake of the terrorist attacks on Paris a few weeks ago, Justin Welby, the archbishop of Canterbury, admitted that the attacks had caused him to question where god was. Unsurprisingly, he got a quick answer that apparently made everything okay, and then, happy with this superficial response, failed to pose any of the hundreds of followup questions that any sane person would have asked, given the opportunity of a direct line to god. I’m with Professor Ceiling Cat on this one: I think Welby is just using current events in a grotesque method of promoting himself and his agenda, as unbelievable as that may seem coming from a man of the cloth. You are welcome to view that interview video at the first link above and see if this strikes you as the manner of someone conversing with god – I have to admit I’ve seen more convincing performances coming from 10-year-olds…
Curiously, the same question has been asked millions of times in the past, always in the face of terrible events, and while the churches keep reiterating the same responses, they don’t seem to be sticking. There is a regular conflict with the idea of a loving and caring god, especially one that favors the “right” people, that nevertheless permits some pretty atrocious behavior; it’s almost as if the idea of “right” isn’t really worth anything. But what happens if we ask such questions honestly, without immediately finding a self-justifying way of dismissing the subject? Where does the question of where god was during the attacks actually lead?
1. The most obvious response is, god was on the side of the terrorists. Let’s face it, nobody thwarted the attacks, no one was forewarned by vision or divine communication, including the archbishop himself and his casual conversations. Hell, Welby says god admitted to being in the middle of it! Further, there’s also the statement that the victims’ tears were being saved. Now, obviously the stalwart christians find this to be somehow reassuring, but it sounds pretty damn sadistic to me, like a serial killer recording his victims’ screams.
2. Religious folk are inordinately fond of raising possibilities as justification for their beliefs, so none of them should have any problem with the possibility that human suffering is simply not a mitigating factor in god’s actions. This is the biggest stumbling block, because 2.8 seconds of thought demonstrates how this conflicts with a loving and caring god. According to every religion on the planet, we were created this way, including our ability to suffer, so we can only conclude that suffering is completely intentional. After all, this is a being that created the universe, including the laws of physics, so cannot possibly be constrained by anything at all; everything imaginable could be accomplished without human input, period, and certainly without human suffering, so it could only exist because god wanted it to exist – which makes this a definition of “loving and caring” that no sane person should even contemplate. The usual counter-argument is that this world is a test to see how we get to spend the afterlife, which doesn’t actually change anything and ignores numerous facets, like how many people suffer way out of proportion to others. Do starving children in economically depressed countries really require more ‘testing’ than the rich fuckers in Europe? Because this seems like a seriously inefficient system…
3. It doesn’t make any difference whatsoever. This is also an answer that is forwarded by religious folk fairly often, in the guise of, “it’s all part of a master plan,” and variations thereof. Fine, no problem; if it’s all part of a plan then it doesn’t matter what the hell humans get up to, does it? Good and bad have no meaning in such circumstances, and guidance is pointless – which means that archbishops and all other holy men have no actual purpose. If we don’t know what the plan is, then we cannot act on it, and free will and all that jazz is pointless. Do whatever you want. The terrorists could be acting as god’s right hand – we don’t know.
4. It’s all nonsense; there’s no supreme authority, no plans, no goals, just the laws of physics and the pettiness of imperfect humans. Shockingly, this doesn’t run afoul of any evidence that has ever been put forth in the history of mankind, despite people like the archbishop and their conversations that somehow fail to produce any useful results. Of course, what this means is that we deal with adversity, not as a plan that we don’t know, not as retribution for some unknown affront to magic sky pony, but as simply undirected events. Except, of course, for the directed actions of people like the terrorists – and, not to leave anyone out, the inquisitors, the holy tribunals, the purgemasters, the fundamentalists pressuring the lawmakers, and all of those who believe they’re acting on some divine authority because we still fuck around with such flimsy and insubstantial excuses.
Because, as long as we keep trying to see such things in religious terms, they’re never going to improve. There’s a huge difference between what’s “right,” according to any religious nitwit you care to ask, and what’s “beneficial” according to a secular outlook: “beneficial” is measurable and largely objective, while “right” is any fucking thing that somebody can loosely interpret from their supposedly holy scripture. The archbishop is quite sure that he’s right… and so are the terrorists, and for that matter, every other religious person that exists. Well, that certainly clarified matters. And instead of believing that “right” is something that should be both demonstrable and convincing – in other words, capable of converting everyone in the world to the One True Religion™ – religious folk tend to believe that everyone that doesn’t agree with them is mistaken and, all too often, an infidel. This has been going on for centuries; obviously it ain’t accomplishing jack shit.
Doubt is a very useful emotion; it makes us examine our decisions and and actions to ensure that we’re correct, and makes us pause before acting rashly. Yet it’s imperfect, because it can easily be overridden by ego, as in, the process of finding justifications for an existing attitude so that we never discover that we had been wrong. Welby’s ‘answer’ very quickly made everything okay, even reassuring him that his own brand of christianity was correct despite no evidence at all that demonstrated this. It’s not safe to assume that the terrorists did the same exact thing… and it’s not safe to assume that they did not, either. When the practice is so prevalent within religion – indeed, religion cannot actually exist without it – then it’s not a matter of whether this dismal trait of humans contributed to so many vicious acts all throughout history, but how often.
I’m not comparing Welby, or the bulk of religious folk, to terrorists; I’m simply pointing out that a common trait among all religions not only permits, but passively condones, actions of this nature. This is a pretty wretched state of affairs from something that is supposed to guide mankind towards good. You’ll notice that Welby, high priest that he is, did not actually offer anything of any use whatsoever to the situation – he simply tried to alleviate the doubts among the other christians who might consider him an authority. He could, while in conversation with god, have sought some functional action to take, but somehow did not; no question of where to find the responsible parties, no inquiry about changing their motivations, not even a request for a hint about how to avoid such things in the future. This is like climbing the mountain to speak to the wise man and asking him what the elevation is. None of this strikes me as odd, but I have to wonder why so many of the religious folk never seem to grasp such things. Feel free to ask about it yourself; you know all you’re going to hear are even more excuses…
There are further problems with this kind of self-indulgent lip-service, though. First off, it’s very easy to play armchair psychologist in such situations and assume we know what was motivating the terrorists, when we have a hard enough time knowing what motivates ourselves. However, if we really are dealing with religious extremism, the archbishop of Canterbury appearing on TV and claiming that the attacks made him doubt his god are not exactly helping, for countless reasons. The most obvious is that this is something they’d be delighted to hear, and Welby’s quick follow-up that his faith was still intact (and that the terrorists were “perverted” in theirs) could very well be motivation to try harder on their part. The second bit is, couching any of this in terms of religion would simply be validation (something that, to their credit, many people in Paris specifically avoided and denigrated.) It is not a holy war, and as an atheist I can say this even while calling religion absurd; this is simply an act of over-emotional but not-very-bright people, who haven’t grasped how little their actions are really going to accomplish. I can give the faintest bit of credit, at least, to both Welby and cardinal Vincent Nichols for not trying to provoke a christian response, instead saying this was best left up to the governments. While that’s kind of a “duh” thing, it makes them at least marginally brighter than any terrorists.
But worst of all, any mention of religion at all in such circumstances is simply implying that religion has any relevance or application whatsoever – even when it manifests in such a wishy-washy ‘answer.’ We don’t need to be validating and encouraging such pointless and vapid thinking; there are real issues out there, and we need real solutions, and the ability to seek them rather than hiding behind a cloak of self-righteousness. Every day we have some fucktard that does something incredibly stupid and very often harmful, based on their belief of ‘what god wants,’ and none of us can call it stupid if we do the exact same thing ourselves. There is nothing that we will ever do to eradicate extremism completely; psychosis is not going to go away. However, psychosis is not a dividing line, but a spectrum, a large grey area, in many ways defined by what culture and society have established in the first place. If believing that you can talk to some magic puff of smoke is actually seen as aberrant and unhinged (rather than as a supremely arrogant bragging point,) there’s simply going to be a hell of a lot less of it. Not to mention, those that still do will be easier to spot.
I was afraid of that
Over the years, I have determined that spiders, even tiny ones, are remarkably good at dealing with cold weather; the newborn green lynx spiders that I observed all winter long on the rosemary bush drove that point home quite well. So at present, I have two magnolia green jumping spiders (Lyssomanes viridis) that live in a small terrarium on the porch, feeding on the fruit flies and midges that I capture when the weather is warm enough. And today, when poking around halfheartedly outside, I found another that was so small I had to look twice to assure myself of what species it really was. The image seen here is a ‘studio’ shot on a potted parsley leaf, but represents how I found it closely enough.
We’ll get to a proper visualization of the size in just a moment; for now I’ll say that, in wrangling it for the photo, it scampered off of the index card that I often use for manipulating such small subjects, over to the edge of the glass-topped table on the porch, and disappeared into the edge; the table has a metal frame that the glass is set into, of course. And the wee spider not only ducked into the frame, but completely around the edge of the glass and came out on the underside – finding it again was a great deal of luck coupled with a wild hunch. Since I had not yet managed a single shot, this whole session could have ended before it even started.
I couldn’t begin to tell you how young this one was, but it was much smaller than the two I have currently and I know they’re still juveniles. Nonetheless, after the escapade around the edge of the table, it proved rather cooperative from that point on, allowing me to get quite a few frames. Oh, it still hid on the underside of the leaf whenever it could, but flushing it back on top only required some gentle suggestions with the tip of the tweezers, upon which it would stay up there for a minute or two as the flash fired off again and again. It was small enough to require the reversed 28-105, so to begin with, here’s the full-frame image:
… while below is the tighter crop for detail.
You’ll notice that the depth-of-field extends only as far back as the back of the ‘head’ (cephalothorax) – the abdomen is already well out of focus. We’ll see how short this range is in a moment. Of course, you can also see the wandering eyes that make this species so much fun to observe (you have seen the video, right?) and how big the secondary eyes are at this age, plus the absence of the ‘Lurch haircut.’
I took enough frames to ensure that I had at least a few that were sharp; this is not at all evident at the time, because the focal point is so small that a tiny twitch can render the spider fuzzy, and I’m not that perfectly steady when handholding the camera. Hell, even exhaling too hard can send the leaf swaying. The goal is to trip the shutter in the brief period that the spider has become as sharp as possible in the viewfinder, hoping that the minuscule delay in capture was not enough to twitch out of focus again, but also taking enough shots to increase the chances cumulatively.
I had a minor advantage with a subject this size, too: she was small enough that the distance to the looming macro lens was too great for her to consider jumping across, something the larger specimens often didn’t hesitate to do. I’d either have to pull back sharply to thwart the impending jump, or stop and get them off the lens as they ran around avoiding me like an impish child in a shopping mall. In fact…
… here’s an actual scale shot, and the position indicates that the spider is about to jump – I’ve seen it enough times now to recognize the minute repositioning and the gathering of the legs, which you can see are evenly placed. You can see that the body length of the spider is perhaps just over 2mm, with the cephalothorax (and thus the depth-of-field) to be 1mm at best. So if you want to see what it’s like, try this: hold a pen in your teeth, and lean over a table without touching it and try to keep the point of the pen precisely at a particular millimeter marking on a ruler, without wavering a millimeter. That’s about comparable to focusing on such a small species, and reason enough why I try to lean against something steady whenever possible. Of course, if it’s the table that the subject sits upon, I can end up shaking it slightly even by breathing, and if it’s a parsley leaf on a slender stalk, this vibration gets magnified. Get the idea? Studio work is easier, but not exactly effortless.
[By the way, the chromatic aberration visible here on the rule, the green and magenta borders to the black lines, is not coming from my lens, but from the printer that produced the rules for me – they’re actually small Photoshop images tacked onto the border of my business card photos, that I fussed with in small increments until they reproduced at the right size. Photo prints, even meticulously-sized ones, are rarely printed at exact proportions, but enlarged slightly to overlap the edges enough to hide any registration errors, so even if I included a precise millimeter scale according to DPI and all that, they wouldn’t be accurate – I believe I’m sending them reduced by 3% to match up to the enlargement by the printer.]
But here’s another scale shot, perhaps a more illustrative one:
This was the first shot that I attempted, ruined when the spider took off and disappeared within the table, but successfully captured a little later on; the metal surface you are seeing here is a dime. Does that illustrate the size well enough?
And then, I made the mistake of slipping my subject here (the spider, not the dime) into the terrarium with the other two spiders and a half-dozen fruit flies. I have already seen the territoriality of the two occupants, which largely stay at opposite ends; the little addition didn’t even last an hour before I found her in the chelicerae of one of the larger ones. Worse, that one had just recently chowed down on a fruit fly, so this was either gluttony or spite. I attempted to get an image of this to follow through, but callous larger spider had perched onto the silk screen that serves as the ceiling and closure of the terrarium, which is only held on with a rubber band right now until I construct a new lid, so I couldn’t get a clear shot without disturbing her. Now, at least, I know not to introduce any more in with those two.
All of these shots save for the first, by the way, were done with the new reflector, no changes from that configuration. I’d say it’s working pretty well.